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Comment by coupdejarnac | Hacker News Reader

My cousin, who is a former K St lawyer, told me about how in the 80s(?), Texas passed a law that allowed people who fit very narrow requirements to take the bar exam without attending law school. One high profile businessman passed the bar exam this way.

So.. If you want to skip law school, have one of your legislator cronies slip in a law school loophole in a bill.

Non-lawyers are allowed to take the patent bar exam. It's the same exam IP attorneys take, except if you pass you cannot call yourself a patent attorney without a law degree. You get the designation of patent agent. That's what I plan to do- become one of the few licensed engineers that has also passed the patent bar.

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You still have to have an accredited BS in engineering or science to take it. I assumed a degree from an accredited school would fit the bill but found out that was not the case when I wanted to take the patent bar years ago. You have to check the website to see if your degree qualifies.

I have a BS in Computer Information Systems which is almost identical to the CS degree that I could have gotten. The difference was that it switched out some general classes and the foreign language requirement for business classes...which seemed like a good idea to me.

Only the BS in CS was accredited. I also have an MS but the patent bar strictly cares about your BS.

You can also choose to pass the FE exam to qualify for the patent bar; most states require a BS in engineering to take the FE exam, but not all, and an FE pass in a state that doesn't still qualifies.

There are also various combinations of coursework that qualify (x semester hours of physics, y semester hours of engineering or chemistry, etc...). It's in the patent exam application docs.

One interesting and controversial one is that mathematics courses are excluded from patent prep (i.e., mathematics is specifically excluded from the list of courses that qualify you for the patent bar[1]).

https://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/grb.pdf

https://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/usptovsmath.html

[1] perhaps this is why mathematics dressed up as something else often gets patented, because the patent bar specifically and deliberately excludes people with strong math backgrounds from the profession.

Yeah, some of the requirements do not seem well thought out. I've passed the EIT and PE exams but not the FE exam. I have two engineering degrees, but let's say I had a math degree.(If I recall correctly you can take the EIT/FE/PE with hard science or math degrees.) I wouldn't qualify for the patent exam. That said, all these licensing exams are about jumping through hoops- find out the requirements, and finish them.

This is because professional licensing occurs at the state level in the US. While there are legal credentials at the Federal level, there are not Law Licenses. The same is true of CPA's and the IRS has a test/certification for Enrolled Agents that have the equivalent status of CPA's in terms of representing clients in tax matters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrolled_agent

I thought Vermont permitted this, and according to the article, it is (or was) four states:

"Today, only four states — California, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington — allow aspiring lawyers to take the bar exam without going to law school. Instead, they are given the option to apprentice with a practicing attorney or judge."

>> You get the designation of patent agent. That's what I plan to do- become one of the few licensed engineers that has also passed the patent bar.

These people often get called as expert witnesses in IP-related cases and get paid a huge amount of money. I am sure you know this, but it's definitely something to investigate.

Sorry, what exactly needs investigating?

Whether there is an alternative revenue stream to be had.

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